Enterprises handle a large volume of phone calls from clients or customers, both external and internal. To facilitate the processing of this large volume of phone calls, many businesses utilize technologies such as call centers and automated call routing equipment. In general, each call center contains the equipment and personnel necessary to manage and to process a large volume of inbound or outbound calls. Inbound call centers provide support for incoming sales and for customer service requests, including technical assistance related to hardware and software problems encountered by the customer on their computing platform.
The problems associated with call routing inbound calls increase as the customer service functions are divided and distributed among an increasing number of departments and representatives. To provide automated routing of the customer's call request to the appropriate service department or representative, call centers typically contain an automatic call distributor (ACD) to handle incoming calls and to provide the desired routing. For example, the ACD connects calls to a sales representative, a customer service representative or a help desk operator, among others. The ACD also facilitates automated routing of incoming calls to prompt the caller to select one or more menu choices and to place calls that cannot be answered immediately into a hold queue until the next appropriate agent becomes available.
The routing and queuing provided by the ACD were historically handled by a live human operator. For example, a customer would call a customer service number and would be connected with the live operator, who would determine the customer's needs and then route the call accordingly.
The use of ACD has provided companies with a more efficient method of handling and distributing incoming customer requests, particularly as the number of these requests grows. In general, ACD systems prompt callers through a multitude of levels of menus. Recent technological advances also provide for the use of voice recognition systems to facilitate customer routing and menu selection. These systems, however, do not eliminate the need to progress through various menus levels. In addition, voice recognition systems provide additional problems, including an inability to understand all spoken responses. With these limitations, ACD's can create a customer service interface that is slow and frustrating and that produces a negative response in customers, which is not a desired reaction for purposes of customer service.
In networked computer systems, customers contact information technology help desks to request technical assistance with applications running on various systems within the networked computer system and with network related issues. Assistance is obtained using over the telephone, via E-mail or using web-based help. When support personnel are contacted (with an ACD being used to route the incoming call to the appropriate support person), information is then gathered from the customer, typically regarding the technical issue for which assistance is requested and other general information that is necessary to provide the assistance, i.e. software version, operating system, error messages. The support personnel may also request additional information about the context in which the technical problem occurs. Such context may include the set of URL's, i.e. Web sites, that the customer has recently visited with a browser, the set of recent patches downloaded for a specific application or even the properties, e.g. the owner or modification date, of a recent document opened by an application. In many instances, such context information, especially related to recent actions, may pinpoint the likely cause of the error or configuration problem. This information is concurrently transcribed by support personnel and can be associated with a specific help desk inquiry, for example by assigning a trouble ticket number.
The process of transcribing, however, is time consuming and relies on the support personnel to provide a full and adequate transcription of the information that is provided by the customer. In addition, the customer may be asked to repeat information as the call is routed or elevated through the call center. Moreover, in many instances, the customer is not completely aware of the recent context of the specific application, e.g., the customer many not remember accessing a particular website or downloading a music file three days ago, and would thus be unable to provide a complete and accurate picture of the recent activity on that computer or with that application. The information that is provided by the customer may ultimately be superfluous.
A help desk system is needed that would provide the necessary technical information to help desk personnel without the need for customer prompted input. The needed technical information about the recent context or activity state of the user or the application would be used not only to speed the ultimate resolution of the assistance request by particular helpdesk personnel, but possibly also to improve the call routing features of the ACD based on the additional metadata about the requestor's contextual history. Suitable systems would leverage the existing network infrastructure including taking advantage of the existing data and communication infrastructure of networked systems to provide diagnostic and contextual information that can be used provide the requested technical assistance. In particular, that availability of such context data may be especially useful in future converged network environments where the means of seeking assistance, e.g. a Voice over Internet Protocol phone call or an instant messaging session, are located on the same device as the application for which the used is seeking assistance.